With Knights of the Fallen Empire, the latest expansion for SWTOR, Bioware tried something different, and right now I’m not talking about all the gameplay changes I applauded back when it first hit in October. The game is in a better place than it was. Now it has to keep improving.

Have you ever played a BioWare game where a dialogue option you chose resulted in a completely unexpected response? I certainly have. In fact, I distinctly recall cursing into the night, "Dammit, that's not what I meant to say!"

It may be massively multiplayer, but Star Wars: The Old Republic is still a BioWare game, and that means dialogue trees. Let me share with you the rules I've set in place to make sure my Smuggler character is every bit the scoundrel I want him to be.

I just had a hands-on demo with the hugely anticipated massively multiplayer role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic, but after an hour of watching self-described sizzle reels of prerendered and in-game footage, showing casually pirouetting Jedi and environments full of foxfire and crepitating tails of energy,…